4/21/2009 @ 5:45PM

Where Are The Luxury Marketers? On Vacation

In a new TV and Web spot in the works for Patron tequila, skiers in Aspen and Vail, Colo., debate which resort is better for hitting the slopes. At the end of the spot, Patron is pitched as the one thing these active jet-setters don’t debate. The spot was created by and will air on Plum TV, where it is likely to be featured along with an interview of a local celebrity on the cable TV and Web channel.

Companies selling high-end products may be cutting back when it comes to spending money on mainstream media outlets, but they’re still finding a way to reach their audience. The Patron ad is one of many ads and programs Plum TV is creating or customizing for marketers in the first six months of 2009. It caters to advertisers big and small that are interested in pitching products and services to wealthy residents and tourists in eight glitzy vacation markets, including The Hamptons, N.Y., Nantucket, Mass., and Sun Valley, Idaho.

Most of the content created by the media and marketing company is frothy lifestyle fare. In Martha’s Vineyard, there’s a interview airing on TV and the Web with singer and resident Carly Simon, who plugs her latest CD. In Miami, French DJ and record producer David Guetta gives an interview before ducking into an oxygen chamber.

Perhaps its best-known show is “Beyond the Boardroom,” hosted by Jonathan Tisch, the chairman and chief executive of
Loews
Hotels. It is a soft-core 30-minute chat with Tisch and a top executive. Guests have included Donald Trump, fashion designer Vera Wang and
American Express
Chief Executive Kenneth Chenault. The conversations often focus on their upbringing and lives outside work–and subjects far from company business. PricewaterhouseCoopers sponsors Tisch’s show.

Plum TV execs insist that viewers don’t mind that most of the content is hawking something, such as the Eddie Bauer outerwear that will be featured in episodes of a mountaineering show called “The Summit” when it debuts in July. “The audience gets that this is a paid message,” says Rob Gregory, Plum’s network sales president. “They want this in Aspen, not Pulitzer Prize work.”

Advertisers apparently can’t get enough. Among the 50 national marketers that buy ad time around or sponsor Plum TV fare are American Express, BMW,
Bank of America
, Thomson Reuters and
ExxonMobil
, which puts its name on a philanthropic TV series called “Giving.”

“We want to hit c-suite executives and trend setters, and 32% of Plum’s market is c-suite executives,” says James Kelly, a spokesman for PricewaterhouseCoopers. He says the company spends 10% of its annual ad budget on Plum TV. It spent $23 million on all media last year, according to advertising spending tracker TNS Media Intelligence.

Chris Glowacki, chief executive and one of the three founders of Plum TV, refuses to disclose the New York City company’s revenue for last year, but he says big advertisers pay between $50,000 to $500,000 to advertise or sponsor a show. Plum TV’s 600 local advertisers–restaurants, jewelry designers and such–pay between $5,000 and $100,000 for 30- to 60-second ad spots and campaigns. The price is steep for a smallish audience. How small? It counts 240,000 viewers a week in December in Miami.

To advertisers, the company promises to deliver a tony group of free-spenders–and not just when they are in front of the TV or computer. Plum also throws 30 parties a year so its advertisers can mix and mingle with locals in its markets. Some events are small dinners, others are larger parties with up to 200 people. This summer Plum execs plan to host a series of parties for Anheuser-Busch and its Landshark brand.

Plum TV was created in 2004 by Tom Scott, founder of Nantucket Nectars, film producer Cary Woods and Glowacki, a former NBC executive. Investors include Tom Freston, former chief executive of
Viacom
; Jason Flom, chief executive of Virgin Records; and singer Jimmy Buffett. Its shows are carried by five cable companies, including
Cablevision
and
Comcast
, which collect 10% of Plum TV’s local ad revenue, says Glowacki.

Plum has competitors–and critics. In The Hamptons, Greg Schimizzi gripes that Plum TV isn’t “real television,” unlike his 15-year-old Hamptons TV, which covers the annual Hamptons Classic horse show and the Hamptons International Film Festival. “The last thing people want to see right now is how well the wealthy are doing,” says Schimizzi.

Glowacki disagrees. The company, which just finished its fourth round of fundraising, plans to use the undisclosed amount it raised to expand. Glowacki wants an outlet on the West Coast or another ski market. The thinking seems to be that the people who are still flocking to these “hubs of extreme affluence,” as Glowacki calls them, are even more desirable to advertisers now because they can truly afford to be there.